Innovation Team Manager

Why This Job Is Exciting At Innovatrics, we equip you with the tools, context, and trust to thrive, and a clear path to grow and make a meaningful impact throughout your journey with us. We're hiring the manager who will lead our Innovation Team — the people who explore new biometric ideas, turn the promising ones into validated proofs of concept and demos, and carry Innovatrics' presence in standards bodies, academia, and EU-funded research. In your first weeks, you'll explore... The team — the AI/ML and cryptography engineers you'll lead, and the product, engineering, and leadership partners they work with Innovatrics' biometric products and the team's research focus areas, including palm-based recognition, face morphing detection, and revocable biometrics Where things stand — the current roadmap, the work in flight, and the standards, academic, and EU-funded commitments already underway As you settle in, you'll start contributing by... Taking over the day-to-day leadership of the team, and starting to hire the innovators still to join Stepping into the innovation roadmap and Innovatrics' external commitments, with support from the people who hold them today By the end of your first six months, you'll... Run the team and its roadmap end-to-end, and work with the CTO and CSO on which research directions become Innovatrics' strategic bets Represent Innovatrics in its standards, academic, and EU-funded research commitments in your own right What You'll Help Build At Innovatrics, we build biometric technologies for phygital identity, elections, border control, law enforcement and secure remote onboarding in 80+ countries. Our algorithms have reached over a billion people. The Innovation Team is where new ideas are pressure-tested before they become product commitments — and where Innovatrics' external influence, through standards bodies, academic partnerships, and EU research, is built. As its manager, you own both sides: the team that builds the proofs of concept and demos, and the strategy that turns them into a competitive edge. We're a small team, so ideas move fast — from concept to demo in short cycles. Join us if you're motivated by applied research, by growing the people who do it, and by solving problems where the solution isn't obvious from the start. What You'll Own This role carries five distinct areas of responsibility: People & team leadership. Line-manage the team, grow each engineer, and hire the software engineers still to join — alongside the existing ML and cryptography engineers. Innovation roadmap (Product Owner). Own and prioritise the innovation backlog — deciding what the team builds, setting success criteria, and making the kill-or-scale calls. The team takes ideas as far as a validated proof of concept or demo and hands them over to product and engineering — it does not take them into production. Standards & ISO representation. Hold Innovatrics' seat in biometric standardization work (e.g. ISO/IEC, CEN), and translate where standards create risk or opportunity for the roadmap and products. Academic & research partnerships. Own university and research-institute relationships as a managed portfolio, and set up and steer academic pilots so they feed the roadmap. EU-funded research projects. Lead Innovatrics' participation in EU research consortia (e.g. Horizon Europe) — proposals, consortium relationships, deliverables, reporting, and hiring for project-funded roles. Working Hours & Location We prefer candidates based in Bratislava or Brno, where our core R&D teams and HQ are located. We are also open to remote candidates based anywhere in Europe — in which case roughly 15% travel to our Bratislava HQ is expected. The role also involves regular travel to standards-body (ISO/IEC) working groups and to academic partner meetings.